Fisking Kerry from Debate. Question 4

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Question #4

LAURENT: Senator Kerry, you've stated your concern for the rising cost of health care, yet you chose a vice presidential candidate who has made millions of dollars successfully suing medical professionals. How do you reconcile this with the voters?

KERRY: Very easily. John Edwards is the author of the Patients' Bill of Rights. He wanted to give people rights. John Edwards and I support tort reform.

By which he means, we don't support it.

We both believe that, as lawyers — I'm a lawyer, too.

Oh boy, that will bring in the swing voter big time. Lawyers are America's most loved profession.

And I believe that we will be able to get a fix that has alluded everybody else because we know how to do it. It's in my health-care proposal. Go to johnkerry.com. You can pull it off of the Internet. And you'll find a tort reform plan.

And like all my pdf's on the site, if you like vague generalities, you'll like my plans.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, important to understand, the president and his friends try to make a big deal out of it. Is it a problem? Yes, it's a problem. Do we need to fix it, particularly for OGBYNs (sic) and for brain surgeons and others? Yes. But it's less than 1 percent of the total cost of health care.

So when doctors leave my state because of insurance costs, that's less than 1% of my cost.... I guess when I can't find a doctor, I can't spend money. Hey, that saves a lot more than 1%. You should have mentioned that.

Your premiums are going up. You've gone up, in Missouri, about $3,500. You've gone up 64 percent. You've seen co-pays go up, deductibles go up. Everything's gone up. Five million people have lost their health insurance under this president.

Like the Iran thing, the question was about tort reform. Tort reform. You're wandering again.

He's done nothing about it. I have a plan. I have a plan to lower the cost of health care for you. I have a plan to cover all children. I have a plan to let you buy into the same health care senators and congressmen give themselves. I have a plan that's going to allow people 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare early. And I have a plan that will take the catastrophic cases out of the system, off your backs, pay for it out of a federal fund, which lowers the premiums for everybody in America, makes American business more competitive and makes health care more affordable.

"I have a Dream" went over a lot better. "I have a plan" sounds elitist. And given the amount of detail to which you are willing to share, it isn't even true.

Now, all of that can happen, but I have to ask you to do one thing: Join me in rolling back the president's unaffordable tax cut for people earning more than $200,000 a year. That's all. Ninety-eight percent of America, I'm giving you a tax cut and I'm giving you health care.